Carrot Halwa / Gajar Halwa

Carrot comes in abandon during winters. One thing which everyone knows to make with carrot is gajar halwa. So in winters a standard sweet dish at many houses is garjar halwa. Everyone have their own methods of making this. You can make it the traditional way by cooking it in the milk for long hours, there are instant gajar halwas, some make it with jiggery/gur, some with condense milk, and the list goes on.

In this blog I am going to pen in the traditional way of gajar halwa which my mother taught me. It takes a long time but it is worth a try for the end result of mouthwatering hot halwa ( jeeb lap lpaye). She always told me that the milk should cover the carrot when you start and end with only carrots and the rest is all in your hand i.e you should be careful that it doesn’t stick to the bottom and burn.

The carrots which we use to gajar halwa are red, sweet long ones and not the orange colored ones as it does not have its own sweetness.

So, please try this and post in your comments.  I would like to hear from you.

 

Ingredient

Carrots – 1kg (grated)

Milk – 1 ltrs
Ghee – 2tbsp
Sugar – 1 cup
Cardamom powder – 1tsp
Raisin – 1 tbsp
Cashewnuts – 2tbsp (broken into pieces)
Khoya (dried whole milk) – about 100gm (optional)

Method

1.      Heat the heavy bottom pan, add milk and grated carrot. Initially cook on high flame till the milk boils.

2.      Now on medium heat let the carrot and milk cook, regularly stir this so that it does not stick to the bottom.

3.      When the milk is almost 3/4^th of the original quantity, add sugar and dry fruits. Sugar will melt, so the content will become a little watery.

4.      Keep on cooking till the milk thickens (be very careful that in the process of thickening it should not stick to the bottom of the pan and burn).

5.      Now add ghee and cardamom powder and mix well, cook for a minute.

6.      Add grated khoya, mix well and remove from heat.

7.      Now serve it hot.